Extra! Extra! Classical WETA-FM, In Nation's Capital, Broadcasts Newly Found Recording Of John Knowles Paine Overture Shakespeare's "As You Like It!"

The full extent of American Classical Music on Classical WETA-FM, in the Nation's Capital, on March 26, 2007:

11:52am: Grande Tarantelle
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
William Tritt (piano)
Cincinnati Pops
Erich Kunzel (conductor)
[Telarc 80112]

6:24pm: Overture to Shakespeare's "As You Like It"
John Knowles Paine
New York Philharmonic
Zubin Mehta (conductor)
[New World Records 374]

In the wake of Classical WETA-FM's recent act of intellectual suicide in terms of classical American musical culture, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, also in Washington, D.C., now feels free to trumpet "Jazz" as America's greatest and only classical music.

Source: Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts March/April Brochure. Cover and contents.

The Harvard Gazette's Celebrating John Knowles Paine's Legacy by Ann P. Hall


















The Angel of Death and the Sculptor [from the Milmore Memorial], 1889–93; this carving, 1926

American classical artist Daniel Chester French (American, 1850–1931)
Marble; 93 1/2 x 100 1/2 x 32 1/2 in. (237.5 x 255.3 x 82.6 cm)
Gift of a group of Metropolitan Museum trustees, 1926 (26.120)

[Daniel Chester French sculptor of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.; home of the American classical music hating Classical WETA-FM.]

"Modeled between 1889 and 1893, French's Milmore Memorial (also known as The Angel of Death and the Sculptor and Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor) was a commission from the family of Boston sculptor Martin Milmore (1844–1883), to honor his memory and that of his brother Joseph (1841–1886). The bronze, erected in August 1893 in the family plot in Forest Hills Cemetery, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, was greeted by an acclaim that secured French's status at the forefront of his profession. In the final work, a winged angel of death, massive in her physical presence, appears to the young sculptor, who is in the prime of life. Chisel and mallet in hand, he rests his left knee on a ledge projecting from his unfinished relief. The angel, her cloak falling in heavy folds, reaches out gently with her left hand to halt his actions. In her right hand she carries a group of poppies, symbolizing eternal sleep. In this sculpture, French joined high and low relief with in-the-round sculpture and assimilated realistic and ideal elements into a concordant whole. In 1917, the president of the Metropolitan Museum, Robert W. de Forest, asked French, who was also a Museum trustee, about acquiring a replica of the original. After delays due to World War I, French contracted the Piccirilli Brothers, New York's leading firm of marble carvers, who completed the work between 1921 and 1926."

"Daniel Chester French: The Angel of Death and the Sculptor from the Milmore Memorial (26.120)". In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/modl/hod_26.120.htm (October 2006)

Photo credit: (c) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City Timeline of Art History, the United States and Canada 1900 to the present. With thanks.

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Shakespeare in Washington Festival at the 'Jazz' and 'Shakespeare' loving, and 'American Classical Music' respecting, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.